Grade 4. More Chord Colors

In this grade, you’ll bring more color and sophistication to your playing with dominant chords, secondary dominants, and a new key. You’ll explore how tension and resolution create movement within chord progressions.

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Day 1. Dominant deep dive

Dominant chords bring tons of juicy tension and resolution into progressions. You’ll learn how to use this sound in a classic pop-inspired progression.

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Day 2. Secondary dominants on my mind

Using Ray Charles’ Georgia on My Mind as an example, you’ll learn how you can use secondary dominants to resolve to chords other than the I chord. This is a great way to sustain tension and instantly sound more jazzy. 

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Day 3. Georgia on My Mind

Our Ray Charles-inspired progression gets even more harmonic movement today. Learn how to stack secondary dominants to add more tension and natural movement to your progressions.

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Day 4. New scale: F major

Use your major scale formula to unpack another new key: F major. Learn more about sharps and flats and why they depend on musical context.

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Day 5. Let’s Stay Together

Give your F major skills a musical home with a soulful progression. Dion helps you explore richer chord colors while keeping chord movement smooth.

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Day 6. Keep it Together

Complete our soulful progression with more rhythmic movement between both hands. This will prepare you for the performance section, where you can submit this song for professional video feedback.

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Day 7. F major workout

To wrap up, Jacob will run you through a workout focusing on the F major scale. This will help you build fluency with its shape and sound.

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Performance pieces

Choose a song to learn that takes what you worked on in Grade 4 and puts it in a musical context. Here, you'll get to jam with a live-recorded band of pro L.A. musicians as your backing track.

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Personalized feedback

Submit a video of yourself playing a performance piece from this grade for custom video feedback on your playing from our team of pro pianists.

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Final quiz

Make sure you're ready to move on to Grade 5.

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Grade 5. Two Hands, No Problem

Two-hand independence is one of the most important skills to level up your playing to intermediate and beyond. In this grade, you’ll focus on getting your hands working independently. This will help you learn more complicated and rhythmically dense arrangements.

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Day 1. Hand independence

Each hand gets its own job today. You’ll start building more independent movement between your hands.

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Day 2. Two-hand arpeggiation

Now, you’ll start building the muscle memory to arpeggiate chords using both hands. You’ll also work on opening up the keys by moving chords to new octaves around the keyboard.

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Day 3. More two-handed fun

Bring together bass, melody, and syncopated rhythm with a funky two-handed groove. By the end of the day, you’ll sound more like a full band.

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Day 4. Chord melodies and drop 2 review

Take your first step into the wonderful world of chord melodies by playing your melody note at the top of drop 2 voicings. This technique is vital for playing solo.

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Day 5. Your first classical piece

Prepare to wow grandma at the next family reunion with your first classical melody – Pickup style. You’ll need all your new skills for this one.

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Day 6. Your first classical piece (continued)

Complement your classical melody with some accompaniment. This will make the song feel like a full arrangement.

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Day 7. Workout

This workout will help you build control between your hands as you work through major 7 and minor 7 chords using split voicings.

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Performance pieces

Choose a song to learn that takes what you worked on in Grade 5 and puts it in a musical context. Here, you'll get to jam with a live-recorded band of pro L.A. musicians as your backing track.

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Personalized feedback

Submit a video of yourself playing a performance piece from this grade for custom video feedback on your playing from our team of pro pianists.

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‍Final quiz

Make sure you're ready to move on to Grade 6.

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Grade 6. Styles

In this final grade, you’ll revisit the skills you’ve built through the lens of different genres. Become a more well-rounded player with richer harmonic color and genre-specific phrasing.

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Day 1. Gospel and the pentatonic scale

You’ll learn the best scale for improvising and playing melodies using one of the most iconic gospel songs of all time.

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Day 2. Gospel & chord movements

Now that you’ve gotten the pentatonic scale down and learned the melody to Amazing Grace, you’ll learn some really beautiful 7th-chord voicings to complement this classic gospel song.

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Day 3. Rock

In this lesson, you’ll revisit Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and add some rock stylings in the fashion of Elton John. You’ll spice up this rock progression by adding melodic movement within some chords and adding a syncopated rhythm in your left hand.

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Day 4. Soul

Now, you’ll add some new life into the progression for Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together by adding the 9 to your chords.

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Day 5. Jazz melodies

Learn how to use grace notes to make a melody sound more like a jazz vocal line. You’ll also get more familiar with the C major pentatonic scale.

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Day 6. Jazz chords

You’ll finish Jazz Cat 101 by making the chords to Georgia on My Mind more colorful with fuller 7th and 9th chords. Whether you’re playing on your own or accompanying a singer and band, the techniques you work on today will help you adapt to any musical situation. 

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Day 7. The ultimate late beginner workout

Wrap up the pathway with one final workout to solidify all your new skills and knowledge. 

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‍Performance pieces

Choose a song to learn that takes what you worked on in Grade 6 and puts it in a musical context. Here, you'll get to jam with a live-recorded band of pro L.A. musicians as your backing track.

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Personalized feedback

Submit a video of yourself playing a performance piece from this grade for custom video feedback on your playing from our team of pro pianists.

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Final quiz

Make sure you're ready to move on to new challenges.

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